Cydia has become the premier iPhone application distribution channel for the …

Share this story

When Jay "Saurik" Freeman first started building Cydia, his collaborative open-source distribution system for iPhone, he decided to name it after a pest. Cydia pomonella is the scientific name for the coddling moth, which as Freeman writes "is what we often think of the as the stereotypical apple worm." He adds, "I felt the name was fitting." It's certainly easier to say than Rhagoletis, after Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot.

Image courtesy of Western Australia
Department of Agriculture

Cydia has proven to be quite the worm. It's now installed as a standard part of the iPhone dev team jailbreak, allowing users to customize their systems with software not available through official App Store channels; in fact Cydia is the jailbreak equivalent of the App Store.

With Cydia, you can download, install, and update software from independent developers. As with App Store, Cydia notifies you when new updates are available and offers lists of featured and recently added items. Standout packages include the Cycorder video recorder, Winterboard, which allows you to customize your iPhone with artistic themes, and a bevy of application launchers. None of these programs are allowed in App Store as they all violate Apple's strict usage rules.

Cydia has upwards of 350,000 users. Freeman told Ars that the mechanism to track unique iPhone identifier count changed couple of weeks ago, so this number is reading artificially low as many users may not yet have upgraded their software.

The Wikipedia writeup on C. pomonella is particularly ironic when considered in light of the iPhone: "[it] has proved to be a problematic pest on several fruit trees, including apples and pears. The caterpillars burrow into the fruit, rendering it un-sellable. Traditional insecticides are of limited use, as some strains have acquired resistance to several insecticides."

Freeman regularly gets e-mails from people asking how to say the name. He jokes that they write "'Please help me win this bet I have with my friend: is Cydia pronounced see-dee-uh or sigh-dee-uh.' It's always two incorrect choices." For the record, the correct pronunciation is sih-DEE-uh. Or it is at least for the moment. "I don't actually speak or study Latin, but I am a linguistics student." He adds that he's open to corrections from Latin experts.